Ansible Playbook to Configure HAProxy and HTTP Web Server on EC2 Instances and Dynamically updating IPs in HAProxy Configuration file

Karan Agrawal

4 min readJan 17, 2021

In this article we will:

Launch 3 Instances on AWS
Configure 2 of them as Apache Web Servers
Configure 1 of them HAProxy Load Balancer

Setting Up Ansible Controller Node

Launch Instance
Install Ansible using the command:

pip3 install ansible

3. Transfer key to Controller Node (.pem file)

4. Set up the configuration file (/etc/ansible/ansible.cfg)

5. Set up inventory file.

That’s all Ansible Controller Node is all set.

Setting Up Apache Server and HAProxy using Ansible Playbook

Run the following playbook to Set up Apache and HAProxy.

- hosts: ws
   tasks:
      - name: "Installing HTTPD and PHP"
        package:
                name:
                        - "httpd"
                        - "php"
                state: present- name: "Writing Webpages"
        copy:
              dest: "/var/www/html/index.php"
              content: "<pre>\n<h1>Task 12</h1>\n<h2>Done By Karan Agrawal</h2>\n <?php\n\nprint `/usr/sbin/ifconfig`\n\n?>\n</pre>"- name: "Starting Services"
        service:
                name: "httpd"
                state: restarted- hosts: lb
   vars:
           port: "8080"
   tasks: 
      - name: "Installing HAProxy"
        package:
                name: "haproxy"
                state: present- name: "Configuring HAProxy"
        template:
                dest: "/etc/haproxy/haproxy.cfg"
                src: "/haproxy.cfg.j2"
      - name: "Starting HAProxy service on IP {{ ansible_facts['default_ipv4']['address'] }}:{{ port }}"
        service:
                name: "haproxy"
                state: restarted

Use this file as haproxy.cfg.j2

#---------------------------------------------------------------------
# Example configuration for a possible web application.  See the
# full configuration options online.
#
#   https://www.haproxy.org/download/1.8/doc/configuration.txt
#
#---------------------------------------------------------------------#---------------------------------------------------------------------
# Global settings
#---------------------------------------------------------------------
global
    # to have these messages end up in /var/log/haproxy.log you will
    # need to:
    #
    # 1) configure syslog to accept network log events.  This is done
    #    by adding the '-r' option to the SYSLOGD_OPTIONS in
    #    /etc/sysconfig/syslog
    #
    # 2) configure local2 events to go to the /var/log/haproxy.log
    #   file. A line like the following can be added to
    #   /etc/sysconfig/syslog
    #
    #    local2.*                       /var/log/haproxy.log
    #
    log         127.0.0.1 local2chroot      /var/lib/haproxy
    pidfile     /var/run/haproxy.pid
    maxconn     4000
    user        haproxy
    group       haproxy
    daemon# turn on stats unix socket
    stats socket /var/lib/haproxy/stats# utilize system-wide crypto-policies
    ssl-default-bind-ciphers PROFILE=SYSTEM
    ssl-default-server-ciphers PROFILE=SYSTEM#---------------------------------------------------------------------
# common defaults that all the 'listen' and 'backend' sections will
# use if not designated in their block
#---------------------------------------------------------------------
defaults
    mode                    http
    log                     global
    option                  httplog
    option                  dontlognull
    option http-server-close
    option forwardfor       except 127.0.0.0/8
    option                  redispatch
    retries                 3
    timeout http-request    10s
    timeout queue           1m
    timeout connect         10s
    timeout client          1m
    timeout server          1m
    timeout http-keep-alive 10s
    timeout check           10s
    maxconn                 3000#---------------------------------------------------------------------
# main frontend which proxys to the backends
#---------------------------------------------------------------------
frontend main
    bind *:{{ port  }}
    acl url_static       path_beg       -i /static /images /javascript /stylesheets
    acl url_static       path_end       -i .jpg .gif .png .css .jsuse_backend static          if url_static
    default_backend             app#---------------------------------------------------------------------
# static backend for serving up images, stylesheets and such
#---------------------------------------------------------------------
backend static
    balance     roundrobin
    server      static 127.0.0.1:4331 check#---------------------------------------------------------------------
# round robin balancing between the various backends
#---------------------------------------------------------------------
backend app
    balance     roundrobin
 {% for i in groups['ws'] %}
 server app{{ loop.index  }}  {{ i }}:80 check
 {% endfor %}